Bittersweet, odd, and a little sad.

by beanalreasa

My head is full of too many thoughts on some wildly divergent topics, and I had been meaning to write about some of them in an effort to empty my head of them. Or something.

Anyway.

~~~

Late yesterday morning, I had an ‘interview’ with the Department of Children and Families.

As you might imagine, I was dismayed by the fact that anyone from DCF wanted to speak with me, much less so, that they wanted to stop by.

I had to keep reminding myself that the purpose of DCF as a government agency is to assist and to help those in need of their services; their mission statement is ideally one of being of service to the community…and yet much like the FBI or the CIA, I don’t think that anyone really prefers to have to deal with them in any capacity.

But honestly, I couldn’t keep avoiding them either, since they’d been calling, and we had been playing a tense game of phone tag for a little over a week as of yesterday.

So, I spent yesterday morning feeling more than a little uneasy, and as one does, I was bustling about trying to tidy things up a bit to try to distract myself from my snowballing thoughts of doom.

But the appointed time came, and I was outside dead-heading my roses (how apt that seems — for spiritual reasons — I realize now) when the social worker pulled up.

I don’t know what she had expected of me, but the social worker was pleasant and engaging. She seemed positively apologetic for asking me so many questions, and for the sheer amount of paperwork that she was requesting that I fill out.

I got through the interview without too much trouble, even though my anxiety level felt pretty high.

(And even more so today. Yesterday, she informed me that a urinalysis was standard procedure. She asked if I would mind giving her a test sample since she just happened to have a test in her car So I did, but today I am concerned that I didn’t ‘pass’ it, much to my dismay, since she was sparse and non-committal in when I phoned her for details surrounding the result this morning. Um… yeah. *worries*)

~~~

I have to remind myself that this social worker is representing an agency that would be trying to help me rather than judge me.

~~~

Though what strikes me the most about yesterday, in retrospect, is how we had talked about mental health issues and how humor can serve as a mask and a coping mechanism for those with clinical depression. I was telling her about my depression and my various diagnoses since 1997, and we specifically talked about Robin Williams at length.

I consider him as an example of the manner in which I often find myself trying to cope. I try to see the humor…or the absurdity in things whenever I can. I don’t always succeed in doing so, but I do try.

I am often inspired in my darkest moments by how closely related my fears are to my joys, and how I prefer to make jokes rather than cry whenever I focus on coping with my anxiety or my depression.

She responded to this with surprise, and admitted that she never made that sort of connection. Her reaction was something close to delight, and she expressed that she found my way of thinking rather enlightening, considering what I’d been through.

To that, I had to smile, since I was inwardly amazed with the situation: how had I managed to be so entertaining for over two hours when I felt like such a wreck inside?

A strange thing happened while I was having my DCF interview in the dining room.

About an hour into things, my kid comes rushing into the room, suddenly asking me to hold back our dog, and to please keep him out of the patio for a few minutes. Meanwhile, the dog is barking and throwing himself excitedly against the sliding doors.

But by the time that I corralled the dog, excused myself and got out there to see what was up, the bat seems to have died… because it wasn’t breathing.

Poor thing.

My kid had wanted to bury it in the yard, but I nixed that idea. (We have three cats, and a dog who all love to dig, and I feared that it was more than likely if we buried it anywhere on our property, one of them would work tirelessly until it could be gotten to, unfortunately. )

*sigh*

~~~

And then, this morning, while I was out walking to find a place off of our property to bring the dead bat…

Suddenly I saw something out of the corner of my eye come out of the bushes, buzzing loudly.

I thought that it was some sort of insect — perhaps a dragonfly, or really big wasp is what I thought it was at first —

And it flew right up into my face briefly.

Without thinking, I waved it away, which must have disoriented it

Because then it flew downward

and inward

towards me

and hit me in the middle of my chest.

Ow.

When I looked down on the ground, I realized that it was a bright little red and green hummingbird much like this one:

Amazing.

It seemed stunned, and when I bent down to get a better look, it suddenly flew up and away, albeit a bit haphazardly.